language insights

February 04, 2015

Next to nobody reads budgets. So how the President and others position it is incredibly important. And boy has he found a gem with “middle class economics." The political reasons why have been well-enumerated. So I’ll stick to the rhetorical ones. Politicians have been pumping us full of these feel good phrases about “middle class” Amurrica for decades, and for decades we’ve noticed the same phenomena in our messaging research. While technically around 20% of the top and bottom earners are omitted from Obama’s definition of middle class in the budget, earners at both ends of the income specturm self-identify as middle class. With such a large proportion of Americans unsure where they fall on the spectrum, most hear they’ll be helped by a budget labeled like President Obama’s. Brilliant! That makes it something everyone can get behind.